When I began my blog a few years ago I did so for two reasons. #1 to help bring more public awareness to adoption scam and help protect other hopeful adoptive parents from being devastated and #2 to heal myself and release the painful scars Amy Ost left on me.
As time passed I wrote in spurts and then pretty much stopped. My blog reads, for the most part, as my personal story and when I started reliving the emotional rape I suffered I would uncover bits and pieces I had forgotten or rather stored away as not to remember. I got to a point where I couldn't continue. I honestly feel very selfish for quitting because perhaps I could have helped keep just one person, like me, from getting her heart ripped out by Amy and other adoption scammers.
Last year (2011), Amy conned a precious family from Idaho who contacted me and we all worked with law enforcement to try to bring her to justice. But what happened? She got away with it. Again. Because Amy isn't afraid to work with attorneys or agencies, her scams are not limited to the internet. I shutter to think about all the people she has destroyed with her vicious, evil lies and games. She doesn't even stop with preying on potential adoptive parents. She cons men out of money and preys on other women. She scours them out as a lover, reveals she is pregnant and they will be a family and steals their money and hearts. She portrays herself as a helpless victim of rape and abuse and houses herself in shelters...shelters that struggle to help those who really need the help.
Now, she is at it again. She is parading all over the country as I speak, emotionally raping women's dreams of becoming a mother to her baby. She is stealing from shelters and those who feel sorry for her and want to help her in some instances, raise her baby. She warns women to watch out for scammers because there was a big one uncovered in Nashville a few years ago. What is perhaps most disturbing to me is that now, according to her more recent victims, it's become more of an emotional game than a financial prowl. She won't take much, if anything, financially from those she promises the baby to. It's not a matter of "buying a baby" for these potential parents, it's about helping the women who wants to give them her child. It doesn't matter what educational background, intellect, financial stability, or lifestyle...Amy is a seasoned, well versed professional in destroying the lives of women who long for a child. Once Amy told me she did it because she wanted to be like me and have the perfect life with a husband, house and kids. She told me she wanted to be loved and needed by someone. It's a sick mental game and after seeing her personally after scamming me, she still didn't realize what she had done. I've said it a million times and I'll say it again. Her eyes were empty.
As time passes and I come into contact with the women she has hurt, I try to facilitate change and knowledge, but she slides right through the cracks again becoming more stealthy and knowledgeable to the laws and ways of the court in the process. She has made a mockery of potential parents, potential birth mothers and women who have placed their child for adoption, men and women she has built relationships with, the goodwill of shelters and those who have given her financial help and yes, our government. Where is the passion? Where is the anger and outburst that occurred after my story aired? After the Vest's story aired? Where is the caring from lawmakers to protect their citizens? Per FBI, unless it's over 10k there is no case. Law officials shake their heads because they literally have to search for a way to charge her and after all their work, it's thrown out of court. According to public defender Chuck Pascal argued that one of Amy's victims weren't physically offended or otherwise endangered by Slanina's lie. "She took on a persona and lied and, as a result of that lie — what? — somebody flew here from Idaho? So what?" Pascal said. "If I were to start criminalizing when one person lies and, as a result of that lie, other people take an action, then everybody's in jail."
So this is what we are up against, which leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
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Slanina was caught and is in an Ohio prison at the moment. She had hidden herself in the Havin I go to for support group meetings. Claiming to be Marie, an abused wife to an ohio police officer. She also claimed to be pregnant.
ReplyDeleteHowever her secret was found out and she is currently in jail. That's what I was told at the Havin group I was at last night when we wondered where she was.